Cassette seals of this type are used for sealing the wheel bearings in automobiles or trucks and for protecting the rolling bodies space of the wheel bearing against water, dirt and the like which enter from the outside. The cassette seals are usually constructed as two-part structural groups, wherein an angle plate ring, which forms a first structural component of the structural group, is pressed onto the inner ring of the wheel bearing, and a sealing arrangement which is pressed into a hub or the like, rotatably mounted via the wheel bearing, forms a second structural component of the structural group. In this connection, the angle plate ring and the sealing arrangement are constructed in such a way that they form an annular sealing device.
Such a cassette seal is known from printed publication DE 698 311 53 T2, which appears to form the closest prior art. The cassette seal disclosed therein has as an angle plate ring a wear sleeve element which sealingly interacts with a sealing arrangement constructed as a composite sealing element. In some embodiments of the cassette seal in this publication, the sealing element has a ring end section which forms, with a section of the wear sleeve element, a labyrinth seal. The free area of the labyrinth seal is realized at its outlet end as a circumferential, disk-shaped intermediate space, which is arranged parallel to a radial plane of an axis of rotation of the wheel bearing protected by the cassette seal.